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>The Penn Museum plans to rebury the skulls in their Morton Cranial Collection
Morton (1799-1851) played a major role in administrating the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP) during the early 19th century. He is now best known for his collection of human skulls, currently curated at the Penn Museum.2 Morton stated that he began to collect human skulls in 1830, after he was preparing a lecture on “the form of the skull as seen in the five races of men,” but found that such skulls “could neither be bought nor borrowed.”3 However, one of Morton’s medical colleagues recalled seeing skulls in Morton’s office not long after Morton began his medical practice in the early 1820s.4
By 1849, Morton reported that he had acquired 867 human skulls through “much time toil and expense.”5 This was not his own physical toil, however. Morton relied on friends and colleagues to acquire skulls and ship them to him.6 He had made many professional connections during the 1820s and 1830s when he was quite active with the ANSP, serving as its recording secretary, curator, and corresponding secretary.7 In 1840, 1844, and 1849, Morton published catalogues which listed each skull in his collection at that time, including both human and animal skulls. When Morton received a skull, he assigned it an ID number. In some instances, he recorded the date when the skull was acquired, as well as the racial or ethnic grouping of the skull, and what information his supplier sent Morton about the location from which the skull derived.
https://www.penn.museum/sites/morton/